Borderlands of Irish Poetry

Abstract

A line is drawn across our experience, by an event in history or a pattern of nature, and we instantly find ourselves in a double life, cut in two by a line of bars. Prisoners and others are signalling under a changing light that makes it hard to see which group is locked in, which at large. A preliminary paradox about the Irish border is that by separating two unequal areas of one island it also forces them to take fresh account of one another. Does an Ulster culture suppose a Southern culture? What other borders, of class, gender, religion, language, does the political fence cut across? How far does political and institutional division mask unity of interests and attitudes? Since nobody is going to suggest that British influence stops short at Clones, or that the Gaelic language abruptly begins to interest writers and readers at Aughnacloy or Keady, what do the terms ‘state’ or ‘province’ or ‘region’ mean when applied to the writers or readers of poetry and the climate they inhabit?